The last few weeks have gone great for the student I chose to focus on for the Portrait of Possibility. As I mentioned in a previous post, he had a couple of difficult days when it came to the art making activities. We found him in tears of frustration when he was having trouble and falling behind the other students. Because Mr Tilley knows his students so well and knows that this is not uncommon behavior for this student, he decided to react with a little tough love and pushed him to "buck up" and work through it. Since then he has had no such troubles and even seems more creative, enthusiastic, and diligent. We have even seen unsolicited collaboration between he and another student, resulting in an outstanding sculpture and story in progress.
My initial plan with this student was to give him more one on one attention, but I found that the formula is a little more complicated than that. It's important to make sure that he understands the task and has the materials he needs, but beyond that, he just needs to be separated from distraction and encouraged to keep working. He has loads of creative ideas.
During the VTS discussions, I do see vocabulary scaffolding going on for this student. He sometimes has a little difficulty articulating what he's trying to say, but I have witnessed other boys offering up adjectives or nouns to help him resolve his ideas.
I still feel that the most valuable aspect of VTS for this student has been the self-efficacy which it engenders. Each week, the boys come into the classroom ready to discuss an image and increasingly this student is one of the first to have his hands in the air.
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